Railways, Amazon tie up to transport e-comm packages

BENGALURU: Amazon India on Wednesday announced that it has partnered with the Indian Railways for apilot programme to carry out inter-city transport of e-commerce packages.

Amazon India would transport customer packages with the Railways on three routes from New Delhi to Mumbai, Mumbai to New Delhi and New Delhi to Kolkata, the company said in a press release.

The partnership is the first in the e-commerce industry to enable the Railways build an e-commerceproduct for freight transport via rail, the release said.

The company has seen improvement in speed for ground transportation of its packages and increased reliability for packages transported through the railways network, it said.

With the initial learnings, Amazon India is working with the Railways to build an e-commerce transportation product that would enhance capacity planning, contract paymentmethods, infrastructure and security of freight movement viathe rail network, the release said.

"The reach and speed of the Indian Railways will further help us fulfil customer orders faster and reliably across the country," Amazon India director (Middle Mile Transportation) Abhinav Singh said.

"We are committed to a

long-term partnership with the Indian Railways, and are excited topartner with them to build freight movement solutions for thee-commerce industry, leveraging the vast railways network,based on the

learnings from our pilot programme," he said.

Amazon India would continue to partner and create more opportunities to leverage the infrastructure built by therailways, the release said.

Last month, Indian Railwayshad partnered with Amazon India for a pilot project to set up pickup kiosks in four railway stations across Mumbai.